Early Spanish settlers described Ventura County as the “land of everlasting summers” and named this region located northwest of Los Angeles County, California, “San Buenaventura”, which means “good fortune”.
The Ventura Regional Sanitation District assures this environment through their commitment to safe disposal of solid waste and effective treatment of wastewater. Recently, in their continuing efforts to protect this area, they installed JWC Environmental’s advanced design Septage Receiving Station, the Honey Monster.
The plant receives septage through septic trucks, called Honey Wagons. Previously, the trucks would pull in, open up a valve and fluid would run out into wet wells through bar racks. The drivers would continuously have to rake these bar racks and manually take out solid waste materials. After these wet wells were taken down, they would still have a large amount of rocks, grit, rags and solids. Not only that, a large quantity of rags would still be found in the aeration tanks, thereby making this a very difficult fluid to process. Septage handling was becoming a very costly problem in terms of time and labor.
The Honey Monster provided the solution. It allows cleaner handling of septage truck waste through the effective separation of solids. The separation process is enhanced by the Muffin Monster® grinder and the award winning Auger Monster®. The Muffin Monster breaks solids down into small pieces, enhancing the washing action of the Auger Monster prior to removal. Richard Castanan, Plant Operator at the Ventura Sanitation District, comments “With the Honey Monster, we’re able to screen waste that comes into the facility and save money in terms of disposal through landfill, rather than having solids tangled up in our aeration system and removed as biosolids.”
Ken Rock, Director of Waste and Wastewater for Ventura County, adds that after installing the SRS, “We have accurate flow measurement and we don’t have a problem with rocks and grit that we used to have. We don’t have to clean the influent wet well the way that we used to. Our guys opened up the manhole, looked inside and said there’s not nearly as much as what we used to see every month, and it’s been over three months now!”
